


Life, Examined

by thedevilchicken



Category: Superman/Batman (Comics)
Genre: Canon Related, Depowered Superman, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-04
Updated: 2008-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:06:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4233279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the events of the Superman/Batman Annual #2, Clark examines his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life, Examined

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal on 4 June 2008.
> 
> For those who haven't read it, the basic plot of S/B Annual #2 is: Clark loses his powers, Bruce trains him, they all live happily ever after!

In the midst of it all, there was Bruce. 

Clark lay awake in his bed, in the house he'd grown up in, by the town he still thought of as home even then, even living alone as he was in Metropolis. The city was strange, he thought; as a child, as a youth, he'd sometimes felt himself drawn to it the way he supposed young people were, knowing something lay beyond the borders of Smallville and their experience, almost but not quite within reach. They lived in the shadow of the city, there just like an indelible smudge on their horizon, and yearned. 

The reality wasn't the dream, wasn't even close, wasn't even a shade of what he'd imagined it to be. At night, he always longed for the farm, with its peace and the stars. Sometimes he went back. 

The decline of Metropolis had been brought to a grinding halt with Bruce's first outing in his Superman suit, the monstrous thing Clark tried to persuade himself really didn't look anything like him at all but probably did more than he liked to admit; Bruce sustained that halt like their own high dam of crime all throughout Clark's training. Clark never asked how he'd managed to be Batman _and_ Superman _and_ his own merciless drill sergeant for all of that time and it wasn't information that Bruce volunteered, probably because Bruce just wasn't the volunteering type. Clark knew more about him just through seeing the way that he lived and the things that he did and those brief, somewhat confused and confusing conversations with a near-hyperventilating Robin than he did from conversations with Bruce. It was an aspect of his character that irritated him beyond belief, but that he'd slowly grown used to. That was Bruce right down to the ground. 

Two months of Clark with his powers restored and Metropolis was hauled right back to its old self again. He loved the city and hated it, told himself sometimes he just had to get away to recharge and so, there he was, back home with his parents in a bed that was always made up just so and ready for him. It'd be morning soon, he knew by the light that edged in through the crack between curtains and crept slowly across the floor - he'd go downstairs for breakfast in the early morning Kansan sun, maybe talk his mom into pancakes like one last home comfort before he had somewhere else to go. 

He had plans. They weren't in Metropolis. 

***

Gotham was a heartbeat away for Superman, a hop from the ground in those bright red boots, a moment suspended in air before the cold rush of flight that would barely ruffle his hair. Of every power he had he'd missed his flight the most, he thought - he'd felt tethered to the earth, so close he guessed that was just how claustrophobia must feel. He'd dreamed about it all that time and woken to a bed there in Wayne Manor, unable to move for those first few seconds when nothing had felt the way it should. He'd never quite learned how to be human and not just tuck Superman in at the seams. 

Gotham was just a heartbeat away but he took the train anyway. He stretched out as best he could in the seat too small for his ridiculous frame, perched his laptop on the tray table and pecked out a couple of sentences while he didn't quite think about work. He watched his hometown turn into the city, the city give way to fields as far as the eye could see under a high golden sun, the towns just like Smallville where he'd probably feel right at home, too. In another life he thought maybe he could've taught high school English - he lived that life in the blink of an eye, the space between letters typed on his keyboard as they sped from Metropolis and his own real life. In another life, he knew he could bleed. 

Bruce pinned him to the floor. It didn't matter that Clark was bigger or stronger because Bruce was all flawless technique and strategic application of force in ways that a depowered Superman just couldn't be for all of his trying. Suddenly he'd had a new appreciation for all Batman's skill, the way he threw a punch without breaking his hand and made those spectacular landings without shattering both ankles or knees. Clark had sprained his own just dismounting the rings in the gym, never mind leaping from a building with so much apparent ease. Everything was so hard to understand. 

Bruce pinned him to the floor and Clark bit down at his cheek with the impact, hard enough to draw blood that tasted bitter in his mouth. He could feel the blood pulse under Bruce's skin and he caught himself thinking it was still odd not to hear his heartbeat, too. His own hammered harder than he'd ever known it and his eyes had gone wide as he'd looked up at him. Training had ceased - he'd had no idea what this was. He frowned as they went their separate ways. The unexamined life he’d led as Superman had been so much simpler. 

The first time Clark kissed him, Bruce didn't object. He stood still and just allowed him to do it, didn't take advantage of his new vulnerability to knee him in the groin or any of the other myriad methods he could've employed to put him down right then and there. What he did instead was wait until Clark had finished and pulled back, then asked if this was some kind of new experiment in humanity - Clark was so embarrassed, so impotently angered by that offhand remark that he'd just clenched his jaw and stormed from the room as quickly as his unsteady legs would carry him. 

The second time, they were training and Bruce _did_ put him down. He remembers the look on Bruce's face once he’d done it, a split-second's surprise before the mask came back down into place and he held out a hand to help Clark up. When Clark didn't take it immediately he retracted the offer, and the hand; Clark groaned as he picked himself up off his ass, off the mats, off the floor. Training with Bruce was like a trial by fire, it was like sink or swim, it was harder than he’d thought he could take and maybe he was cracking bit by bit at the edges. He held on to the thought that all Bruce asked him to be was the best that he could - the only truly impossible standards Bruce ever set were for himself. 

The third time, he started to wonder if this was some kind of odd new variation on the theme of Stockholm Syndrome but that was fine because that time when Bruce pushed him back he didn't push him _down._ He looked at him from a distance of inches instead of feet, those blue eyes that apparently missed nothing, that could tell that two drunk men were involved from a second of body language on fuzzy CCTV. He had a feeling it wouldn't take even a fraction of Bruce's twisted genius to see what he was thinking then. He didn't say no; Clark never did decide if Bruce was just indulging him, if this was some kind of new training, if they each wanted it just as much as the other. 

He kissed him again. This time, Bruce kissed him back. 

Nothing had prepared him for it. Weeks of running, weeks of weights and Robin perched atop the bar, weeks of over-healthy food and all of Bruce's methods more akin to torture than to training and not a one of them had given him even a basic preparation for this, for the feel of Bruce's hands in his hair and at the small of his back, the solid weight of his body, the heat of his desire, the press of his mouth still spicy with breakfast's cinnamon toast. All he could do was slip one hand to the back of Bruce's neck, fitting himself against him like this was all that was missing and not the lasers in his eyes, not whatever it was in him that let him see through walls, his strength, his ability to fly while his long red cape marked him out like some impossible target in the sky. Just this. 

But once he'd gotten as far as peeling off Bruce's shirt, as far as gathering the nerve to trail one hesitant hand over warm skin and tight muscle to the waist of Bruce's sweats, Bruce stopped him. 

"If this is going further, we should go upstairs," he said, in a tone that could've made him shiver, but Clark recognised the statement for exactly what it was - an out if he wanted one, an invitation if he wanted that instead. Clark was still mixed up inside but went with him anyway. At that precise moment, Bruce seemed sure enough for the both of them. 

Bruce had let him touch him, his hands more fragile then than he'd ever been before, a band-aid still stuck over the back from where he'd broken skin on one of many tumbles, a thin, pale line over his palm from that broken glass, the memory of blood and the bite of lemonade against it still vivid. Bruce caught his hand, rubbed the pad of one thumb over that fading scar and made Clark shiver with it. Everything was new - the heat of Bruce's skin, the sting of the razor in the morning as he cut himself shaving, the apprehension he wouldn't call fear as he settled one hand at Bruce's shoulder, fingers brushing the side of his neck a little lower than the day's worth of stubble at his jaw. He was relearning his body and everything around it, from his breath to sunburn to the thought that maybe his powers were all gone for good and this was what he was now, all of it. By comparison, learning Bruce should have been easy. It was anything but. 

Vulnerability was never Clark's strong suit. His breath caught as Bruce's teeth grazed the pulse in his neck; Bruce nudged the bedroom door closed behind them and the dark in Bruce's room didn't make it any easier. Clark's vision was all wrong, took too long to adapt to the dark and though he should've been used to it after weeks that had stretched into months, it still tore up a wave of panic in him that Bruce's mouth and hands and gaze just as heavy as all the world's new gravity did nothing to ease. He knew it was desire that robbed him of his balance like the world was turning differently and not Bruce. Bruce's hand skirted lower, brushed his erection through his sweats. He shuddered in a breath. That knowledge didn't help. 

Bruce led him to the bed. They sat, they didn't touch, looked at each other in the relative dark and for one long moment Clark struggled to find something to say that would make sense of it all, or hoped that Bruce would do so for him. They were both so eloquent, the billionaire and the journalist, the banter between them always on standby except for that moment when nothing would come. He thought maybe that was it, the end, they'd taken this as far as it was going to go, maybe further than it ever should have gone to begin with. But then Bruce moved. Words seemed to lose their importance under the hard press of Bruce's mouth to his own, as Bruce stripped him of his clothes and what little armour he had left to keep the last shred of him from Bruce's gaze. 

"I thought this would be more of a struggle," Bruce said, and then somehow it was. Something broke inside Clark at that tone of his voice, the small not-quite-smug smile on Bruce's face because all of this time, the weeks of training, he'd slipped into a place where Bruce was more mentor than friend, more master than equal, and why? Clark pushed him down to the bed, those big fragile hands at his hip and his shoulder suddenly stronger in a second. He put his mouth on him. One hand circled his cock. Bruce smiled. 

***

The train came to a halt, the final halt, end of the line out there in Gotham where the station stood like a busy gothic horror when compared with all the clean lines and glass and light of Metropolis. He grabbed his bag from the luggage rack and stepped out onto the platform, vaguely pleased that his alien biology saved him from stiff joints from seats like he'd just endured all the way out from Smallville. He probably could've afforded first class but unlike Bruce Wayne with his bank balance high enough to make Clark's head spin with just the roughest of estimates, Clark just wasn't the kind of person that would even occur to. 

He queued for a cab, wasn't surprised at the brow-quirk from the driver when he asked for Wayne Manor. He drummed his fingers on his thighs as they drove, remembering the last time he'd done this, remembering that time flight hadn't even been an option at all. He didn't wish that he'd flown. Perhaps his thoughts were faster than most, but occasionally they needed time too. 

He paid the driver then jogged up the steps, up to the front door, dimly aware that he'd tread the stone to dust before he tired that way these days. He rang the doorbell; Alfred answered as he he'd known he would, with the barest hint of a smile and a _Mister Kent_ in that same British accent Clark hadn't been able to fathom wasn't at least vaguely tinted with American by that point in time. He let him in; it was still early and Master Bruce, he said, was still… downstairs. And so that was where he went, down to the Cave with a grateful grin he flashed to Alfred, and left his bag in the hall. 

"Clark." 

"Bruce." 

They'd seen each other since that night, of course, since Socrates and the stroke juice and revelation by ordeal somehow putting the super back in Superman. They'd met for discussions of the JLA, met with Wonder Woman and the Flash and Oliver Queen who Bruce still insisted on mocking, met a couple of times on actual business, the kind where their respective suits were definitely on for all the gathering nuisance TV cameras to see. Bruce sent him a dictionary in the end, three volumes he was keeping on his desk at work while he tried to find a way to insert the word _picoscopic_ into an article without Perry wondering if he was out of his gourd. And they'd met later that same night, _that_ night, or that morning that followed with everything still fresh in their minds, Bruce clearly exhausted and maybe Clark should have been but for the fact that he was himself again. 

Bruce kept a picture by the bed. Clark had been through the manor often enough to know this; he'd seen the photograph frame, the Wayne family portrait sitting there on the cabinet with Bruce's ridiculously tiny cellphone, his watch that probably cost more than Clark's entire wardrobe and possibly his apartment too, and a small plastic pill bottle full of strong painkillers that Bruce had never done him the discourtesy of explaining away as something like an abseiling accident or some unfortunate incident with a catamaran. There'd occasionally been an alarm clock, incongruously cheap with bright red digits that seemed to sear their way into Clark's brain in the dark while his eyes still weren't quite up to scratch, but Bruce didn't have a lot of patience for alarm clocks - Clark could imagine any number of ways in which those tacky plastic clocks just like the one he had back home met with their untimely demise, and Alfred's sighs as he cleared away yet another set of their broken remains. 

That night, after Socrates, more like morning once all was said and done, Bruce turned down the picture when he went to bed. It was Bruce's only concession to the night's effects on him, and he glanced at Clark as he did it as if daring him to speak. He didn't. Bruce sighed. All that Clark could do then was kiss him. 

Bruce was never quiescent in bed, Clark had found that out for himself during those weeks out in Gotham. Bruce knew what he wanted and brought out that self-same quality in Clark - they'd struggled for the upper hand before, Clark not quite sure if they were just playing at it in some kind of strange Bat-game or if Bruce meant for it to be so very nearly a fight. But that night, Clark was Clark again. Somehow Bruce never seemed to be scared that Clark would hurt him, even though they both knew that he could. 

Clark hadn't been careful before then - the only place he'd been able to let go was Bruce's bed, though that fact had bemused him more than his fear. He was more scared than Bruce, he thought, knowing if he let go after that then the consequences would be more than he could live with. Clark was careful. When he pushed into Bruce it was so painstakingly slow, Bruce's usual even breath hitching as he wrapped one muscular leg around Clark's waist. Bruce's hands gripped Clark's forearms as they moved together, breathless. Their gazes met. 

He always had the sense that Bruce could see right through him, as if he was the one with the x-ray eyes and not just Superman. Bruce could see right down to his bones with those cold ice-blue eyes of his, not just past the suit though even that was more than he could say for any other acquaintance. Thanks to Socrates, he'd even seen that hidden part, the human, the humanity he'd been lent back in Kansas; Bruce hadn't tried to tell him that was okay, it was fine to be Clark Kent and nothing more, maybe he should just go be a reporter, that the shine of that elusive Pulitzer he'd win one day would lodge itself in the space left in him by the theft of his powers. He didn't try to tell him that bringing back Superman was all he had to live for, either. He'd underestimated him but that didn't mean he didn't believe Clark could be as much man as Superman; Superman was power, but Clark was something else completely. 

Bruce pulled down the cowl and ruffled his hair with one still-gloved hand as he blinked at the adjustment of light. He took a step closer, blue eyes focusing in on him. For a second, Clark couldn't imagine why he'd ever called them cold. 

"Planning on staying?"

"If you'll have me."

This time, he didn't ask why.

Lois didn't care too much about Clark Kent. The one she wanted was the freak in the bright red cape, the one who could bench-press astrodites even if they occasionally died screaming as he hurled them back into space to save the world. He was resigned to that fact now, that Lois would only ever be Superman's and even then only in a strangely ephemeral way, and when he looked at her through Clark Kent's glasses he'd only ever be the bumbling hick in her eyes. It hurt, but wiser men than he had said that the truth often did. 

And then there was Bruce, long-limbed and solid and scarred around the edges under all those perfect cashmere sweaters and tailored slacks that came all the way from Europe. Bruce who'd fight him if it came to it, Bruce he believed had a safeguard against him hidden somewhere in the cave and somehow even that was a comfort. Bruce who'd helped him when he'd needed it. Bruce who paused then, assessing, before he moved to kiss him. Even when they didn't agree, Bruce at least understood. 

He supposed this was his life, examined; his crucible hadn't ended with the restoration of his powers but had followed him back all the way to Metropolis, in a way. Now the test was complete; this was his life. And when it came to it, in the midst of it, Bruce belonged there.


End file.
